Astronomy News

Mar 21, 2014 by News Staff

Using images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, a group of astronomers has created a dramatic 360-degree portrait of our Galaxy. This is a fragment of the GLIMPSE360 panorama. Image credit: NASA / JPL. Milky Way Galaxy is a flat spiral disk; our Solar System sits in the outer one-third of the Milky Way, in one of its spiral arms. When we look toward the center of our Galaxy, we see a crowded, dusty region jam-packed with stars. Visible-light...

Mar 18, 2014 by News Staff

Scientists using the BICEP2 Radio Telescope at the South Pole announced they have found the first direct evidence that gravitational waves – disturbances...

Mar 12, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of scientists using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer has discovered the largest known yellow hypergiant star in our Galaxy. This...

Mar 6, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astrophysicists led by Dr Rubens Reis from the University of Michigan has directly measured the spin of a supermassive black hole in a quasar...

Mar 5, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory have captured a stunning new image of the bizarre spiral galaxy ESO 137-001. This...

Mar 1, 2014 by News Staff

A new image of a huge supernova discovered six weeks ago in the nearby galaxy Messier 82 has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This Hubble...

Feb 28, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered a new black hole in the nearby galaxy Messier 83, also known as M83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy or NGC 5236. Nearby spiral...

Feb 27, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers of NASA’s Kepler mission announced yesterday the discovery of 715 new extrasolar planets orbiting 305 stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. This...

Feb 26, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers led by Alexandra Lockwood from California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have detected the water vapor in the atmosphere of an extrasolar...

Feb 24, 2014 by News Staff

On September 11, 2013, an object with the mass of a small car hit the lunar surface in Mare Nubium, an ancient lava-filled basin with a darker appearance...

Feb 21, 2014 by News Staff

According to astronomers led by Mr Paul Brook, a PhD student from the University of Oxford and CSIRO, a small pulsar dubbed PSR J0738-4042 is being pounded...

Feb 21, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by Dr Alex Markowitz from the University of California, San Diego and the Karl Remeis Observatory in Bamberg, Germany, has discovered...

Feb 20, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has revealed how stars blow up in supernova explosions. This...

Feb 19, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured a new image of the open star cluster...

Feb 18, 2014 by News Staff

European astronomers led by Dr Federico Marocco from the University of Hertfordshire have discovered a brown dwarf with unusually red skies. Brown dwarf...

Feb 10, 2014 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers has reported the discovery of Abell2744 Y1 – one of the most distant galaxies ever found. This image shows the...

Feb 10, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers led by Dr Stefan Keller of the Australian National University say they have discovered the oldest star ever seen in the Universe. This image,...

Feb 6, 2014 by News Staff

NASA astronomers announced the discovery of a strange super-Neptune circling a pair of orange and red dwarfs known as Kepler-413. This is an artist’s...

Jan 31, 2014 by News Staff

Researchers reporting in the Astrophysical Journal Letters have found that the majority of circumbinary planets – planets that orbit two stars –...

Jan 29, 2014 by News Staff

European scientists using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have learned what the weather is like on the surface of one of the objects in a binary...